The conservation and well-being of exotic animals is core to the mission of zoos, aquariums and many small nonprofit wildlife groups. Increasingly, these organizations are committed to scientific research, both basic and applied. To ascertain the current state of the libraries that support their efforts, librarians at the San Diego Zoo conducted…

"California Library Laws 2008" is a selective guide to state laws and related materials that most directly affect the everyday operations of public libraries and organizations that work with public libraries. It is intended as a convenient reference, not as a replacement for the annotated codes or for legal advice. The guide is organized…

Disaster preparedness is an important issue in library management today. This article presents a general overview of the theoretical aspects of disaster planning in libraries. The stages of disaster planning are a circular process of planning, prevention, response, recovery, preparedness, and training.

In 2005 many California Public Library staff members attended focus groups on the status of California Library Services Act (CLSA) cooperative system services, which were held throughout the state in late November and early December and focused on four general questions: (1) What works well now in cooperative library services? (2) What does not…

Describes an ethnic collection development conference held in California that focused on how librarians can meet the needs of the growing numbers of ethnic and racial minorities. Topics discussed include library management; sources of reviews for ethnic titles; selection criteria; acquisitions procedures; cataloging practices; subject heading…

This report describes a study designed to assess the client and staff libraries at each of the 11 California Department of Mental Health (DMH) and Department of Developmental Services (DDS) residential facilities to determine their existing resources and their ability to meet the requirements of the changing facility populations. The study…

The impacts of technology upon traditional library resources are sometimes unexpected. The library at California's University of the Pacific discovered that usage of print materials was dwindling, even though the addition of a 50-station "Information Commons" had bolstered overall library use. At first it was anticipated that the…